Student Violence

Student Violence, Reclaiming the Classroom

Moses Lake, Washington, Columbine, Colorado, Virginia Tech, Virginia, these schools represent the worst of our education system, everything that is wrong within society and that which is putting our children in harms way every time they leave for school. Looking back on the last 20 years, research shows that school violence is on the decline. However, the severity of the violence is on the rise and the threat to students and teachers is still a major concern. As a nation we must identify the factors that lead to this violence and mobilize our resources to eradicate violence from all our schools. For the United States to have any hope of eliminating the most serious school violence we need to understand what has happened in the past, the impact violence has on school social structures, the roles and responsibilities of parents and teachers, and efforts that are currently succeeding to curb school violence. Only then, can we attempt to define a way to successfully eliminating school violence.

The world has been well informed of the deadly acts of hate that took place 20 April, 1999, at Columbine High School in Colorado and 16 April, 2007, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, Are these incidents the extent of school violence or are they the culmination of the worst that is occurring within schools around the world? Though these highly publicized events at Columbine and Virginia Tech represent some of the most deadly hate induced rampages to take place in schools on North American soil, they are not the exception. Indeed, these events serve only to represent the worst that the American schooling system has to offer. According to a joint U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice study on school crime and safety, over 1.4 million students, ages 12-18, were victims of nonfatal crimes in 2004. Of these 1.4 million, violent crimes accounted for about 41 percent, or 583,000. (Dinkes, et al., 2006) Taking in to consideration that 107,000 crimes were considered serious in nature, one can quickly come to the conclusion that our schools are a far cry from being safe havens for our children or their teachers. Furthermore, the impact on this violence is far reaching, as it does not stop on the doorstep of the school property, it stays forever with the student, their friends, parents and educators alike.

The residual affect of school violence is not limited to those students subjected to the misbehavior. Not only do the families, of the over 300 students lost to school violence over the last ten years, have to live with their traumatic loss, but the teachers, students, and parents have to cope with school crime and violence on a daily basis. Each day within the United States, over 160,000 students purposely miss school in fear of being bullied or harassed. (Harnessing Student Power, 2005) For those students that elect to attend school, multitudes of them go to school "with a knot in their guts¬ unable to concentrate, learn, or perform at their best because they are afraid they'll be insulted, harassed, assaulted or worse." (Harnessing Student Power, para. 3) Not only is this fear of violence represented in the attendance records, but because of the reasons stated, school violence is creating a huge disruption to the learning process. These on campus issues continue to torment some students outside the learning environment. Because of harassment, students often feel ashamed, embarrassed, and even isolated, which can lead to more serious issues. According to National Center for Children Exposed to Violence, "Children who are victimized in school crime often suffer from decreased self-esteem, truancy, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] and in extreme cases, suicide and violent retaliation". (School Violence, para. 3). Even though students are at the forefront of the violence and are arguably the most impacted, the social ramifications do not end with them.

Teachers, specifically those in junior high and high school settings, share in the threat of school violence. Of the nation's roughly 3.7 million teachers, two percent or better that 74,000 annually are subjected to violent crimes such as rape, sexual assault, theft, aggravated assault, simple assault, and robbery. These numbers show that per-capita, teachers are "3 times more likely to be the victims of violent crimes at school than are students." (Brock, para. 2) Within the teaching profession, the lack of safety and stability can create hesitance, reluctance, and a feeling of indifference by teachers, leading to acceptance of sub-standard performance to avoid any type of confrontation with students. (CDC, 2008) Outside the classroom, the impact on teachers shows similarities to the student population in terms of suffering from PTSD. However, teachers have also reported more long-term effects such as illness, divorce, and burnout which sometimes lead to career changes. (Brock, 2009) With academics being a hot button issue in today's world, we cannot afford to lose even one motivated educator, so the need to stop the trend of victimizing teachers and students has to be controlled, if not totally eradicated. That responsibility should be in the hands of parents and teachers, but the support needs to come from the top.

Though it may not be possible to track the true cause of some of the most deadly acts of school violence, many educators and doctors believe it all starts with harassment or bullying behavior. In 2007, in response to increased school violence, the General Assembly of North Carolina drafted House Bill 1366, also known as the School Violence Prevention Act. The significance of the School Violence Prevention Act is it defined harassing and bullying behavior and more importantly it defined, for schools and students alike, where the bullying and/or harassing begins. According to the act, bullying or harassing behavior is;

Any pattern of gestures or written, electronic, or verbal communications, or any physical act or any threatening communication, that takes place on school property, at any school-sponsored function, or on a school bus, and that:

(1) Places a student or school employee in actual and reasonable fear of harm to his or her person or damage to his or her property; or

(2) Creates or is certain to create a hostile environment by substantially interfering with or impairing a student's educational performance, opportunities, or benefits. For purposes of this section, "hostile environment" means that the victim subjectively views the conduct as bullying or harassing behavior and the conduct is objectively severe or pervasive enough that a reasonable person would agree that it